Street dates being broken is nothing new when it comes to videogames. Pretty much every game ever gets sold too early by stores somewhere on the world, but it’s not often that it gets sold too early on it’s platform’s online store. Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed was meant to come out this Friday in Europe, but Sony accidentally sold the game too early on the Playstation store. Some normal retailers are of course probably already selling the game, but it’s still entertaining to see Sony sell it early as well. I managed to buy the game before it was pulled from the store and took some screenshots.

So how does it compare to the console versions? Graphically it doesn’t really look as nice, which is to be expected since while the Vita is the most powerful gaming handheld on the current market, it’s not a Playstation 3. Still, the game looks a bit lackluster even when compared to other Vita games, mostly because of the lack of any shader effects. The framerate can also go down a bit at times, though not too much to be bothersome and the resolution is native. Also, the amount of participants in a race has been toned down from ten to eight, which again is to be expected. All of the content from the console versions is in this version, so if you don’t mind there being no shaders this should still make for a good portable version. One issue I noticed that should be easy to patch is that the d-pad doesn’t work during flying segments or all-star moves, it also cannot be used to fire power-ups backwards. The left control stick can still be used to do all of these things though.

Wow, this could have been done on the PSP. (Well except maybe the textures, if it were on the PSP they would have abused the texture filtering.) This is lacking as hell graphically. I hope it plays well at least.
Now to wait for the PC version.

Hey everyone I have an awesome idea that I really, REALLY hope that Sega would consider. Considering the fact that Sega made Classic Sonic appear in a game just last year ago, wouldn’t it be great if they make him appear in Sonic & All Stars Transformed? I mean, imagine it, classic Sonic in his classic red car from the Sonic Drift series. That would be awesome! I mean look, Sega already made tails’ vehicle the same exact one from the Sonic Drift series. Did you ever look at the manual for Sonic Drift 1 or 2? Its the exact same vehicle! Heck, they were even supposed to make Sonic’s original car his main car instead of that ugly remake of Sonic’s current car from Sega All Stars Racing. Lets be honest, the Sonic Drift series weren’t as great, but Sonic’s vehicle fron those series was unarguably great. Sonic and All Stars Racing Transformed is a great game, and it deserves the best. I really hope that enough people can agree with me on the same topic and hopefully we can somehow make the folks at Sega consider this for DLC. Thanks you guys!